Will most likely trap moisture between the mortar and tree, resulting in accelerated rotting vs it just being open. Also looks like a tree that someone shoved concrete into, which may be fine if not visible. See what others think, but I’d remove the mortar if it comes out with relative ease, but wouldn’t go crazy trying to if it won’t.
Internal-Fruit-1482
It was actually a thing back in the day to fill hollow spots in trees with concrete to give it structural integrity to prolong its life. Someone tried to save it as opposed to cutting it down.
Gregisroark
It was probably a hole in the tree that became a beehive, and they patched it.
PandaPantsParty5000
That’s a nice trussy. Nice.
halothar
tl;dr: we used this trick and prolonged a tree’s life nearly 30 years.
This can help prolong the life of a tree in some cases. When I was young, my tree house was in an old sycamore. It was a massive tree at about 4 or 5 feet in diameter. At the top of the main trunk, 15 feet off the ground, there was a hole about 18 inches wide full to the top with concrete. Near the end, you could also stand on the ground and see concrete through a hole in the trunk.
The concrete was poured in the 70s by a handyman, so none of us really knew just how much concrete was in there. The tree finally gave up in the mid 00s. My dad didn’t want to risk his chainsaw blade on it. We dismantled the tree house, cut at the limbs of the main trunk, piled everything around the trunk, and set it on fire.
Then, things got weird. The concrete started popping from the heat, and after a couple hours, enough of the trunk was burned away the we could see the concrete pillar standing tall as the tree fell away. So the tree burnt away nearly completely by evening, and the concrete remained looking like just like a concrete tree. My dad pushed it over by hand, and it broke into sections. Nice and straight, each about 2 feet tall. My guess is that it was poured 1 batch at a time over some period of time. The sections are still being used to protect a will house from wayward vehicles.
5 Comments
Will most likely trap moisture between the mortar and tree, resulting in accelerated rotting vs it just being open. Also looks like a tree that someone shoved concrete into, which may be fine if not visible. See what others think, but I’d remove the mortar if it comes out with relative ease, but wouldn’t go crazy trying to if it won’t.
It was actually a thing back in the day to fill hollow spots in trees with concrete to give it structural integrity to prolong its life. Someone tried to save it as opposed to cutting it down.
It was probably a hole in the tree that became a beehive, and they patched it.
That’s a nice trussy. Nice.
tl;dr: we used this trick and prolonged a tree’s life nearly 30 years.
This can help prolong the life of a tree in some cases. When I was young, my tree house was in an old sycamore. It was a massive tree at about 4 or 5 feet in diameter. At the top of the main trunk, 15 feet off the ground, there was a hole about 18 inches wide full to the top with concrete. Near the end, you could also stand on the ground and see concrete through a hole in the trunk.
The concrete was poured in the 70s by a handyman, so none of us really knew just how much concrete was in there. The tree finally gave up in the mid 00s. My dad didn’t want to risk his chainsaw blade on it. We dismantled the tree house, cut at the limbs of the main trunk, piled everything around the trunk, and set it on fire.
Then, things got weird. The concrete started popping from the heat, and after a couple hours, enough of the trunk was burned away the we could see the concrete pillar standing tall as the tree fell away. So the tree burnt away nearly completely by evening, and the concrete remained looking like just like a concrete tree. My dad pushed it over by hand, and it broke into sections. Nice and straight, each about 2 feet tall. My guess is that it was poured 1 batch at a time over some period of time. The sections are still being used to protect a will house from wayward vehicles.